What Kind Of Day Has It Been
by FigureofDismay
Summary: AU launching from Berlin Pt 2, a version of the arc of season 2 without the presence of Tom Keen, and with a different approach to the Berlin arc. Liz is trying to learn to live with the consequences of her actions, the reality of her future and Red is trying to find the balance between love and guilt. It's a holding pattern. And it's excruciating. Lizzington.
1. the story always begins with death

_As always, updates may be sporadic. But I'm deep in with this one, it's a project close to my heart. This one is for the great authors of the old CJ/Toby fandom ten years ago who inspired me to begin on this road, though they'll likely never see it. I can only hope this thing can live up to it's name._

* * *

He kept having to drop her off at the motel. After the first few late nights on the first few investigations he began to struggle not to speak. He began to feel her terse demands to be left at her seedy, disreputable lodgings — no she wasn't interested in a little late dinner, no he shouldn't arrange a nicer long stay hotel for her, no he shouldn't send Dembe over tomorrow to take her into work even though Dembe would keep her safe in the dark, freezing, too-early morning — were meant as personal jabs to make it perfectly clear how little she wanted to do with him. She wouldn't even look at him as he soaked in the vision of still and petulant face for as long as he was able, even though her coldness hurt him just as profoundly as the sight of her nourished him.

He wasn't entirely sure why he kept offering her rides when these encounters leave him so unsettled. He wasn't sure why she kept accepting.

He always walked her to her door though, and some night she let him in, leaving door open for him to follow in the most non-committal kind of wordless invitation — but it was an invitation he always took when she offered. He didn't know why she let him in either, sometimes he wished she wouldn't, sometimes he wondered if her neighbors on the other side of the paper thin walls around her room wished she wouldn't either because often enough to make him ashamed she ended up shouting or crying or throwing something against the wall, and once or twice he'd been forced to leave before snapping and doing the same.

He didn't know how to stop pushing her and she didn't know how to let an argument end, and more than once she'd demanded he leave and then followed him back out onto the filthy sidewalk in her bare feet to beg him not to go before they were through, not to leave her in the lurch, not to leave her alone and he would follow her back in even though it was a mistake, and all they would do was push each other farther and farther towards hysteria and heartbreak, and those nights usually ended with him looking into her tear-streaked face and feeling like his chest was collapsing — not being able to even form words as she asked for the answers she deserved, and knowing that she wouldn't sleep that night and neither would he and then they'd face each other over a case the next day and never say a word of the night before because these interludes couldn't exist in the world where they worked and hunted and functioned like adults.

Once, instead of trying to get him to admit he was only there for his own interest, or calling him cold and withholding, she only watched him brush past her back into her cluttered and dingy room, completely silent in a way that begged, in a way that stung, and the expression on her face was so lost, so pained and uncomprehending, she looked almost like a child — and yet not child-like at all, the look in her eyes was too grief stricken, the set of her mouth too full of bitterness.

It had been a long, hard stretch of days. He'd sent her after a despicable man perverting his medical training by selling babies to unsuspecting families by means of indentured immigrant women made to be surrogates for a pittance and a promise of citizenship. He'd wanted the business stopped at all costs from the moment he heard of it from a friend of a friend who'd saved his life once who's cousin had gone missing. But then he'd brought the case to Lizzie and watched her bow under the weight of it and regretted every with every fiber of himself that this was their discourse, he brought her monsters and made her look at every awful thing of his world. What must she think of him. It was no wonder there were days when she could barely stand the sight of him.

He'd put out his hand to comfort her that one night, after he'd tried to take his leave to stave off god knows what kind of argument and she'd accused him of fleeing every time they were on the verge of talking about anything real. He touched her so rarely these days, his hand on her arm felt profoundly personal — and she'd crumpled, dissolved, despondent as he'd ever seen her and for a second he'd been paralyzed with fear. How could she still feel so much, how could she still express it? And he realized she'd been picking at him all night over far too much scotch — decent scotch, too, it was one of her few indulgences and he wondered when he was in the mood to flatter himself if she bought it to keep him coming around — because she'd wanted to fight instead of breaking down, she'd wanted company instead of being alone, she'd wanted comforting and he'd been too distracted by his own self chastisement to notice. He'd held her that night, almost 'til dawn, propped up against the hard, creaking, laminate headboard of her motel bed, her head heavy against his shoulder, her arm tight across his chest, her fingers digging in to the flesh of his side.

Usually though, on the nights she invited him in, they'd just have drinks and stare each other down, and he'd sit in the terrible arm chair in the corner of her room that always made his back hurt and watch her as she watched tv or fiddled with her laptop or watched him back with this look on her face. Someday he'd figure out what that look meant and why it made his chest hurt, seeing it on her. Someday he would find a way to convince her that this was not a game to him, not a ruse, not a job or a hoax or anything cruel and premeditated, not even anything he'd meant for, or could control.

It wasn't as though he set out to feel this way about her. And it wasn't as though he was going to demand she feel anything in return. He just wanted her to understand enough to trust him, to let him keep her safe. That was his goal, now that everything else had crumbled when he wasn't looking, just to keep her safe. He wasn't sure anymore that he could win his way back into her life even to do that.

Dembe kept telling him to tell her the whole truth and be done with it or to back away and leave her in peace because this constant tension and half measures were go to irreparable harm to both of them in the long run. In principle he agreed, but he didn't feel in control of himself anymore. He'd realized the reason he was delaying was pure cowardice, and yet even as he planned the words to say and come to the very edge of speaking them a hundred times over he still hadn't been able to force himself to say it allowed when she was there to hear. It was bad enough now, living in the dim and comfortless penumbra of Lizzie's life, it would be even colder and darker when she had cast him off entirely.

And then there was the consideration that nearly justified his silence when he was in a forgiving mood, that the explosive fury of her anger at him might drive her into reckless action — as it had too many times before — and she might put herself in even more danger as she lashed out. Sometimes he suspected she'd learned the lesson of his enemies attacks, that the surest way to hurt him was to hurt her and had decided to dangle her her own destruction in front of him to hurt him, to manipulate his actions. Other times he wasn't able to credit her actions with that much malice, he didn't think Elizabeth, who was angry but essentially kind could be capable of such a thing. But perhaps she was, for him, the evilest influence in her life, perhaps she was.

He was never sure if his fear for himself or his fear for just was the true reason for his reticence. He knew neither reason mattered, truly, not when his silence caused her so much pain. But on the other hand, it also kept her from charging out into the dark after enemies she didn't, couldn't really understand until they'd destroyed her. That made his weakness nearly worth it.

* * *

The summer began with a confluence of disaster, the disappearance of Berlin, the confrontation with Red that had nearly led to her resigning her job and Red nearly getting imprisoned and interrogated for the rest of what was going to be a very short life, the confrontation worry Tom that led to the desperate attempt to save him, begging Red for help, all of it has happened together over a short stretch of days. And after the dust has cleared, and after the man she had known as Tom was buried, she found that her relationship with Red head become strained past all tolerability. Her guilt over the way she had acted towards him, her hurt at the way he and Sam had colluded together in keeping Sam's mortal illness from her, and Sam's decision not to start and fight like she was a child to be protected, like they weren't thinking her off the chance to say goodbye, the compulsion of her pride that kept her from admitting how desperate she was for Red to start on her life in spite of everything, all of those made it almost impossible to keep working with Red.

Even to be in the same room with him was wretchedly uncomfortable for a time, she avoided him as much as she could and yet when she was alone, when she ignored yet another call from him, she knew that she was lonely for him, longing for the time when she had been able to rely on him in times of crisis without crushed by the weight of her conscience. For a while everything in her life was unbearable, every moment with him, every moment without him, every moment with her colleagues who looked at her just as they'd always done, with bland curiosity, sympathy, tolerance, and no comprehension of what she was capable.

As summer went on, Red withdrew for a time. For a few weeks she hardly saw him, even though it was the huge of their search for Berlin. Even as the weather sweltered and cloyed, the distance helped to, of not clear the tension between them, at least allowed her time to ruthlessly compartmentalize it. She was able to have him when he came back with some measure of calm, at least until the first time he showed up at her for late at night, tipsy and reticent but clearly in distress.

* * *

She was the one who shot Tom, she would always have to live with that. He had held a gun to her head and he had been about to shoot Red, had already shoot him in the arm, she later discovered and if she hasn't shoved Tom's am wide there was no telling how that afternoon would have ended. But still, she had good a cluster of shots into his gut, felt the heavy kick off the service weapon in her hand and watched her pantomime husband go down.

She'd demanded that Red let her finish it, it was her mess, her false hope, her traitor to put down, put out of his misery. But she couldn't. There was a look in Tom's face as he sat slumped and bleeding out, like a little boy lost and alone. It was the ghost of the mask he wore to their marriage, the ghost of who he might have been once, not even remorse but something like vulnerability and it skewered her. She couldn't kill a man she'd taken to her bed, not even though he'd used their intimacy to test her and control her these last month's. If she did, she would lose all the answers he could give off what possessed him to use her so. If she did she would toes his poisoned soul to hers and our would surely drag her her down into the abyss and below, lost forever in whatever half realm Tom had lived.

She knelt at his side. She put her hands to his bleeding wounds and made him cry out trying to stop them up. Then she yelled for Red, shrieked for him in panic. She would never forget the look of him as he Berle's back into the room not ten seconds later, his face milk white with fear and his eyes burning with the spark of fury.

She begged him to help. She never him to keep Tom alive, so he could answer their questions. She pled in a tearful rush leaning over her nameless husband groaning in mortal distress, and Red stared down like he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then he pulled out his phone and spoke s number down the line and have their location. When he was done he told her help was on the way.

She remembered watching him fold in on himself after that. His posture slipping towards defeat like a clockwork winding down, his face showed such sorrow, near ageless melancholy before it closed to her into a cold blankness she'd never seen directed at her. For the first time she feared him. For the first time, covered in the blood of a man she hated and worked she could leave for dead, she realized she could lose him - not to a bullet or a prison but in a way that was almost but not quite worse, looking right at him and realizing he couldn't see her. Or that he could, that he finally had seen her for what she was.

Tom had passed out shortly after that and neither she nor Red said anything at all, waiting. It wasn't long before Kaplan and Dembe appeared, with a pair of people in anonymous blue scrubs and lab coats and a tall, long-haired man with a gun that she recognized from Kaplan's team. They bundled Tom off out of the abandoned building, Kaplan looking skeptically between the three of them without comment while assessing the situation with her team. They bundled Tom into a white panel van and onto a gurney and before Liz could try to decide if she were willing to ride with Tom to wherever they were going, Kaplan told her there was no room for her, she should go with Red.

"You will explain this to me later, Raymond, I'm sure," she commanded and pulled the van doors shut in their faces.

* * *

Red's magic code to summon up Kaplan and her emergency medical team only got them so far. Kate later told her that there were three contingencies in place, on for Red himself, one for Dembe, and, though she should have expected it came as a shock, one for her. The stockpiled blood they had access to was not the right type for Tom and they had to send out for more, costing precious time. He made it through the surgery okay, but he was weakened and went on to have a bad reaction to the antibiotics they'd started him on after the surgery. They treated him as well as they could considering the circumstances and sent out for more supplies, different antibiotics, more guards because they weren't sure if Tom would try to escape when he woke up, even considering his condition and they weren't sure if Berlin's side would be coming to retrieve him.

All the while Liz sat outside by the entrance to the warehouse where they'd set up, uncomfortably perched on a stack of wooden shipping pallets. Dembe stood guard near by, she could feel the judgement, the sympathy, the pity in his gaze. Red was nowhere around. She didn't know where he'd gone, she wished she could talk to him, explain to him, apologize for making save this man he so obviously hated.

Not that she could explain, even in her own head she didn't understand, not truly. She needed Tom to live, to prove _something,_ though god knew what, and she was furious at herself for needing, and furious at him for living, for putting a gun to her head, for trying to kill her one ally in all this — as Red proved himself to be, over and over, regardless of anything else he was — for making her stand between him and Red and realizing that she might in that moment be forced to witness Red's murder at her husband's hands. She didn't understand why she had put them all here in the place, trying to save this man. She just knew she didn't want to be the one who killed Tom and she didn't want to mourn his death, and she would, she understood enough to realize that even after all he'd done to her she would mourn him if he died.

* * *

Tom woke briefly in the night, though his fever was already spiking. Kaplan came and got her when he did, warning her that Tom's condition was critical and he was developing an infection. They'd done the best they could and now it came down to whether or not he would survive the night. His chances would look better if he could manage to make it through but the look on Kaplan's face as she explained this to her was not overly hopeful.

Liz went to his bedside, half sure she would beat the truth out of him no matter what his condition, and half sure she wouldn't even be able to get up the nerve to speak to him, as if he could still harm her even while he was in this fragile state. She needn't have worried, he seemed eager to talk, as though here, at the end he wanted her to understand. He was delirious and babbling, she would never afterwards be sure if he had understood what was going on or if anything he'd said had been true. But he had been awake and he'd called out to her when she got near.

"Liz," he slurred, "what's happening, why are you helping me?"

"I need answers, Tom. You can only do that for me alive," she told him, arms crossed, staring down at his sweaty flushed face. It was like that time he had caught a bad flu from the kids at school and wouldn't drink enough water and had ended up with an ear infection like a child, and she'd had to drag him to the doctor... Only it wasn't like that at all. There was this glazed, animal look in his eyes now, like death was already waiting in them. She felt cold, colder than the fan set up at his bedside and chilly May evening could account for.

"M'names not Tom, don' call me that," he said as he shifted and tried to look at her from his prone position.

"Okay. Fine. If you tell me why you're here, in my life, I won't call you Tom"

"I was sent here… it's not important. My boss is gonna get your boyfriend," he assured her with a nod, "You should be glad. You shouldn't trust Reddington. He eats up girls and leaves their bones. Maybe he doesn't even leave those, maybe he makes a soup like Baba Yaga. You should know about that, Lizzie... All good little Russian girls are scared of Baba Yaga."

"Russian? Who's Russian?" She asked, but he was drifting, "Tom! Who's Russian?"

"Everyone these days. You, boss, mother, daughter... It's catching, I think. Everything's about Russia now, just like when i was a kid," he caught his breath for a while, seemingly lost in thought. She didn't like how out of it he was, how small his voice was. She wanted wanted to be cruel and hard, but she wanted to kind, merciful to a dying man. He was dying, she could tell that, she didn't know she would recognize it crouching in wait in the room with them, but she did.

"Said you wouldn't call me that," the nameless man reminded her.

"I said I wouldn't call you Tom if you told me the truth," she said, "But I don't think you've told me any of that yet."

"'S the truth. Swear. You should run away from Reddington, he'll eat you up. I tried to be nice to you, and then I tried to warn you, you have to realize that, Liz. If you had just let me go on being nice to you until it was all done and none of this would have happened."

"If you hadn't taken money to be my husband, none of this would have happened either," she snapped, "What's your name, Tom? What's your boss's name?"

He mumbled something, and his eyes slid shut. Against her better judgment, she stepped to his bedside, put a hands on her husband's shoulder. She wasn't sure if it was to comfort or restrain him. He was scalding hot against her palm even through his hospital gown. "Tom, what is Berlin's real name," she prodded, "How did he find you? How did he find me?"

"Dunno. Ask the Major. Ask Red. Why are you doing this, Liz? Why are you saving me?"

"I told you. You have information I need."

"And after this, you'll let me go?"

"I don't know," she said, and looked away, trying to decide what to say, how much she could promise even knowing she probably wouldn't have to follow through, "Yes. Alright. Yes.I'll let you go if you tell me enough to find Berlin."

"And your boyfriend is okay with that? He won't hunt me down when your back is turned?" he asked. His voice sounded thin, young, helpless.

 _This isn't what I wanted,_ she thought, _This is awful. This is awful. Just die if you're going to, I didn't want you to suffer like this, I swear I didn't. I can't hate you if you suffer. I don't want to mourn you, please don't die._

"You mean Red?" she asked, trying to track what he'd said, prickled by his insinuation but not willing to waste time arguing about it.

"Yeah."

"He does what I ask," she promised, thinking of how Red had done this for her, hadn't he, even though he shouldn't have, even though this futile attempt to save her husband and herself was breaking them all, "He doesn't lie to me. He'll let you go if I tell him to."

"That's nice. That's nice that he does that for you. The Major used to do what I asked sometimes too," he said, seeming to fade, his eyelids were drooping and she wasn't sure he was even able to focus on her anymore.

"Who is the major, Tom?" she insisted, pressing harder on his shoulder, trying to regain his attention.

"Name's not Tom, 's Jacob. Don't tell him I told you. Not supposed to."

"Okay."

"Did you walk the dog? I haven't seen him in days, did he get lost again?" he asked suddenly, as though startling awake.

"Hudson is fine, no thanks to you," she said. Her voice sounded so brittle and dry.

"Oh. Alright. Dumb mutt always wanders off," he said, and sighed and subsided.

"Hudson is a good dog, you just don't know how to talk to him," she said, and it felt like a conversation out of a time warp. She felt like she was suffocating.

"You shot me, Liz," he said like he'd just remembered and it shocked him, "You shoot me today. Didn't think you had it in you. Why are you saving me?"

"I'm not, Tom," she said very gently and found she could hardly talk, and stroked his shoulder instead of holding it down, "I tried really hard, we all did, and I think I broke Red's heart, but I didn't save you. You're dying. I think you can tell that, right? I think, I think you deserve to know. So you should tell me now, everything you wanted me to know."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess... I do know… Name's not Tom... Always hated Tom. 'S Jacob. Nice house though, nice job, nice wife… not so bad if it's the last thing," he tried valiantly to refocus on her, and something strange in his gaze, distant but satisfied, made her take back her hand. "You were always so nice, Liz. Didn't you ever get tired?"

That was the last coherent thing she heard him say. She tried for as long as she could stomach it to get more out of him — which wasn't long — but he dozed and mumbled and Kaplan came and shooed her away so she and the team could undress him and try to bring his fever down with ice packs and antipyretics and a new, stronger antibiotic they'd gotten ahold of, if he could tolerate it.

She went outside again and found that Red was there, waiting and smoking and not speaking to her. The car was nearby, probably in case they needed to make a quick escape. She found out later that he'd overheard most of her interrogation of Tom, Jacob, such as it had been. She would always wonder what it had looked like from the outside, how it had sounded. She sure hadn't been able to tell from within.

She didn't ask for comfort and he didn't offer, but it was a profound relief that he hasn't given up on her completely. In any case, she didn't even think she would be able to stand it if Red tried to sooth her, hold her. She didn't know what to do with herself. She felt vicious and tired and sick, like she'd broken something priceless and irreparable and also like she was being punished in a way she didn't deserve, for something she hadn't done. She was restless and and wanted to pace but she was too exhausted even for that. She had been awake for three days by then, between it all. She sat on her stack of pallets and waited. As dawn came, she began to doze sitting up.

Red's hand on her knee woke her in the pretty, sunny, cold spring morning. Kaplan was beside them, speaking to her kindly.

"He started to seize, from the fever. His heart stopped three different times. We couldn't get him back, dearie. Even if we had, at that point he would have had brain damage from the fever, the lack of oxygen. I'm sorry. He's gone. Do you want to see him? You don't have to, if you don't want to, but it might help you have closure."

"Red?" she asked, sleepy and confused and panicked, "What do I do?"

"I can't tell you that, Sweetheart. Only you can know that for yourself," he said and stroked her knee and she tried not to flinch from the kindness.

"I don't— I don't want to see him," she said at last.

"That's perfectly alright, Dearie," Kaplan assured her with a kindly nod and then took Red's arm to lead him a respectful distance away. Liz still overheard.

"I need to know what to do next, Raymond, about the remains."

* * *

So she became a widow, before she had even had the chance to decide if she wanted her false marriage annulled. They told Tom Keen's school it had been a car accident, Aram even dummied up some police reports and sent a tip to the local news to make the story appear legitimate. Every aspect of the situation aside from the mere fact of his death was too classified and the alternate story was deemed the most prudent course of action from on high. She was glad of something easy to say, ordinary and by wrote to repeat to those who called up to express their condolences to the young wife of their friends Nice Tom the School Teacher.

But it was grating, too, wearying and infuriating to hear over and over what a good guy he had been, how young and selfless, how unfair it was that they'd lost him so early in life. She wanted to shout at them all, that it was unfair but not for the reasons they thought. Unfair because he was a liar and a cheat, a murderer, hadn't hesitated to knock her out when it had meant his escape. Hadn't hesitated to tell her over and over that she was the source of every evil influence in their relationship and extorted apology from her until she had been sure that was her function in life, to apologize to her husband and hope for his forgiveness. Even after his death, even after he had held a gun to her head, she wasn't completely sure his betrayal wasn't something she had done, something she had invited or at least deserved for not seeing it coming. So she didn't shout at Tom's friends for their condolence calls, she just stopped answering the phone and opening the mail.

They buried the body quickly and discretely with a small service she didn't attend - their remaining acquaintances assumed she was too grief stricken - under the name of Tom Keen. No matter what other identities he had once held, that was his only legal identity and that was what his death certificate had read. Kaplan had told her that the whole production would make her transition to widowhood more secure, more unremarkable. She and Red footed the entire expense, though she was sure they did it in a way that no one could trace.

Within a week Liz had moved out of the townhouse and put it up for sale. That's when she got her first motel room. That's when she decided that despair was a luxury she had earned.


	2. in the shadow of gunmen

_we now head into the events of S2 more directly, but don't expect it to look so very familiar. After the few tweaks i made to setup, i found nearly everything else shifted. Red and Liz are not the happiest kids in the world for the time being, but I hope you'll hang in there because I swear it will be worth it in the end. Please let me know what you think!_

* * *

After the Creel case, Red came to see her. Nothing seemed very real to her at that point, and she wished he wouldn't come, she wished he wouldn't keep asking her how she was with this note of concern in his voice that grated on her last nerves, made her want to hit him and make him bleed. He brought her soup and sandwiches in a takeout bag which she grudgingly accepted because to not do so would be childish, and also because the most she'd managed the last three days at her tiny kitchenette was macaroni and cheese from the box.

She was sure it was just an excuse to get a look at her, his eyes kept dropping to the bandage on her wrist and then he'd bite down harder on his cheek. She refused to be embarrassed. She hadn't meant it, she'd been careful, she'd sterilized the blade she'd used, cut just enough to get her looked at but not enough to do real harm, and the pain of the cutting had made her nauseous, she hadn't developed a taste.

"So you're having me followed now," she said, after stowing the food in the little fridge to make it clear he was by no means invited to stay and eat, "A sniper seems excessive, even for you."

"He certainly proved necessary today."

"No, he really didn't. If you guy had given me another few minutes I could have talked him down or knocked him out. Was the gene project he was working on another of the things you don't want me to know about? Is that one of the secrets you're trying to keep? He said he'd found something, you know. In my blood-work. Now I'll never know," she said, rounding on him with her arms crossed and feeling the electric stiffness of reckless fury in her spine. She'd started taking a grim satisfaction in making him flinch lately, and it was getting easier to provoke.

"No, to be perfectly honest I thought Creel was a bit of a crank and his 'warrior gene' theories were far too eager to turn coincidence into causation. Besides which, he proved himself to be a reactionary extremist today by holding a gun to your head," he gestured in her direction with movements stilted with agitation, "Something I had to learn about from Ezra after he reported having to fire his weapon today."

"Look, I'm fine, okay? Not a scratch on me that I didn't put there myself."

"That is the _least_ reassuring thing you could have possibly—"

"I didn't mean it like that. You really are a paranoid old bastard, you know that? I didn't like this," she held up her bandaged wrist, "I didn't mean this. _I'm not going to start doing this_."

"You can see why I would be concerned though, yes? This, today, the stand off with Dr. Creel… that that would make you, and me, all of of us think of what happened before. The spring," he said carefully, gently, mincing words in a way she didn't think suited him at all.

"You mean Tom?" she accused, "You can say his name. Everyone's been very carefully not saying his name recently, with this ridiculous kind of, you know—"

"Yes, I mean Tom. I mean Tom, that day, _with a gun to your head_ and you never really talking about it, and you coming back here alone after everything that's happened today. I was worried, Lizzie, I just wanted to… to come here and say that."

"That you were worried I was going off the deep end? Thanks, that's so reassuring," she said, fed up with concern and being checked up on. She didn't want to be worried over, it was claustrophobic. It was insulting.

"That I'm here, if you need me, if you want to talk to me or if you don't want to talk or if there were anything you should need," he said, with unbelievable patience.

"What I need is for you to not have some sniper following me, spying on my every move. If you want to know what I'm up to, you could try just asking me, like a normal human being."

She sighed and perched listlessly on the foot of her bed. It was stuffy in the room and the anemic air conditioning unit on the wall beside the bed kicked on with the hollow, metallic rattle that still jolted her out of a dead sleep most nights. "I know why, okay, I'm not an idiot. I do know why you've got that guy following me. I'm just having a hard time believing that Berlin is really going to try anything. He seems to have pulled back after that first attack, and… Tom was right there for three years. Berlin could have told him to do anything at that time."

"Ezra doesn't tell me anything," he said, instead of arguing her dismissals, "I'm not trying to spy on you. I've instructed him… that he is not to tell me about what you do, that he only to report to me if he has to take a shot, or if he sees a credible threat moving with intent against you. Think of it like an improvised kind of Secret Service. The best I can manage under the circumstances. He's not a babysitter, he's just there to be sure that no threat can get as close to you as they did to Harold, or Agent Malik."

"I can't believe you're using Meera to justify…"

"I'm not. Believe me, Lizzie, I would not use her death to needlessly scare you into accepting… I had the chance to sit with the man we call Berlin, I looked into his eyes and I need you to be aware that the threat is real. He is completely in earnest, he is deadly, he wants to take me apart piece by piece and he knows about you. That is not a combination to take lightly. I feel a nasty old voyeur hiring these young men with their guns to follow you around. I don't know what they see but knowing they see anything is enough to be _profoundly_ distasteful… But I'm willing to live with this untoward feeling, so long as you are alive to be annoyed with me."

She looked up at him and saw the urgency on his face, the regret, the honest exhaustion, and felt tired, worn and bruised like she'd been awake for a week. Not just tired, but mean and spiteful for turning away the one person left who always offered support, and doing it with as much ruthless malice as she could manage. She had a knack for saying just the right thing to cut him most deeply and she didn't even do it consciously.

Making him even more miserable wasn't fun for her. There were times when she railed at him and he would get this look in his eyes — he didn't even try to seem indifferent with her anymore, not while they were alone — and it made her feel like she was shouting at an already traumatized mutt, but she couldn't seem to help it. Sometimes just his presence there, trying to be nice, to placate and reassure her in these impossible times, was enough to make her so furious that she wanted to break everything in sight. Sometimes, though, it just made her feel so very weary.

"Alright," she said, "Okay, you win. You would know. I guess you're the only person around who could definitively say the threat is real."

"You've effectively gotten me off topic. You're getting quite proficient," he said, after a pause to compose himself. He slid his hands into his anorak and peered up from under his lashes in a look that had probably been charming women into taking pity on him his whole life, "You really are alright?"

"Yes. I mean, I've had better days, but by given values of comparison, this was hardly a blip. I didn't even make the connection between the stand-off today and that day with Tom, so thanks for that," she said and waved off whatever he was about to say to apologize yet again, "No, it doesn't matter. I know I should be grateful for your concern, I am. Really. All you've done for me is… but if I'm honest, reassuring you that I'm alright is turning into one more thing I have to deal with. And I don't need that right now, i've got enough to deal with already."

"Elizabeth, that isn't the point," he said, sharp, sounding frustrated at last, "I'm not interested in empty reassurances, I'm certainly not trying burden you with putting on a show for me. You don't have to be alright, you don't have to tell me something that isn't true just to make me feel better. I would do anything for you."

"It's a nice idea, Red. It's a nice offer. But there isn't anything you can do. All I want is for you to give me space to get on with my life," she said, trying to be polite, trying to be firm, but feeling brittle and false, something like desperation scratching at the back of her throat.

She watched his expression freeze and sink for a moment before he found a way to nod and smile at her with gentle indulgence. This was worse, she thought, worse than watching him flinch. Watching him accept her rejection so gently and earnestly as his due.

She had to sit calmly and brazen it out, not cry and recant and start their cycle all over again. She had to find a way to instill real distance and calm between them or she feared for the consequences.

"Yes. Of course. I'll leave you be, then," he said, and showed himself to the door, "Please lock this after I go. And please at least try the sandwiches before they become soggy and inedible, it's not meant as pity food I promise you... If it makes you feel any less intruded upon, bringing you a little something was Dembe's idea, he cares about you too. We're around if you need us."

With another nod he was gone. She waited a minute and then did as he asked and locked and bolted the door, there was no sense in tempting fate. Then she was back on her bed, staring up at the strange collage she'd made on her ceiling, the one she was sure he had noticed but had never commented on, and wondered how well she would be able to hold to her resolution.

To ask for what she really wanted from him and yet still keep him at arm's length would be the most miserably unfair thing she'd ever done, even more so than begging him to try and save a man they both hated. She couldn't stomach any more such cruelty towards Red, not in the midst of everything else. She'd made him scapegoat for her father's decisions, she'd put them both through the tortuous business with Tom, and then closely on the heels of that disaster, just as he returned from his little break from her that he'd never elaborated on or explained — though he'd come back looking even less rested than before, with a faded sunburn on his nose and a slight limp — Berlin had made his presence known again.

Berlin had claimed to have Red's wife as a hostage, sent him a lock of hair, a blurry photograph, and Red had gone mad with hope that the woman he'd thought dead these twenty-five years was alive, and rage that Berlin could do so much damage to those he loved. She'd tried to talk to him of caution, of managing his expectations but her clumsy, awkward efforts had fallen on deaf ears. His mission to retrieve Carla had a body count, she knew that though she'd never asked the details, and he'd gone dark for a while, scaring her into thinking he was planning to march into battle against with Berlin without ever contacting her or the team. He'd nearly traded his life in hope of his lost wife's rescue while Liz had fought him every step of the way. And in the end the whole ordeal had come to nothing, a hoax, a disappointment she feared would break him.

She had seen then, how much, how wildly, how whole-heartedly and violently Red could love, how much he could sacrifice for those he cared about while expecting nothing in return. First she had boiled with a fierce jealousy of his long lost love, she had realized that in spite of her denial, she'd been so sure that she was the one, his one weakness, whatever that entailed. Later, after the dust had settled, she'd gone cold with fear, at her own possessiveness, at her small, sick sense relief that there would be no long lost wife come into their midst, even as she grieved for his loss redoubled.

And then she'd realized that she also feared the hugeness of Red's devotion, how it could swallow her up, and him — if he truly did care for her as much as he did his lost wife and daughter — how badly, and easily she could misuse him, hurt him, how easy it could be to bend him to her will. She was sure she wasn't good-hearted enough to resist the temptation if it were offered. But also, she's become aware, she'd become _certain_ that if she ever allowed herself to give in to him, really give in and surrender to him the way he had to her too many times, she would go up like dry grass in summer, in an instant there would be nothing left of her but smoke.

She wasn't confident in her self control, she had always been given to moments of wild impulse. But she was sure that her self control was the only thing keeping them wrecking themselves on one another and ending up dashed to pieces. and forever lost. Distraction was key, usefulness.

Her work was so very important now, more than it had ever been, not just as a means of delay but in and of itself. What she was doing now with this task-force felt so much more just — if morally ambiguous — than anything she had worked on before. And she had collected enough case studies on their blacklisters that she could write a number of books, should she ever have the time to devote, or any hope that the subjects would become declassified enough to publish. Her work was all she had, but it wasn't trivial or unfulfilling.

She could give herself up to that instead, and if doing so allowed her a certain leeway to maintain limited contact with Red, so be it.

* * *

After the livid wound of discovering what Red and Sam had kept from her faded, she found herself replaying to herself his halting, emotional explanation of what Sam had asked. She had come to realize that, in a way, a morbid but personal way, Red had done them both a kindness that had cost him greatly. If Sam had asked her, though she was sure he never would have, never ever would have burdened her that way, she knew she would have begged him to stay and fight and suffer instead, and if Sam had gone off on his own to take his own life, if he'd been alone at the end it would have been so much — incalculably worse. He had always been proud and independent to the point of hardheadedness, she'd always known that he didn't intend to linger, that he didn't want to fade out slowly in a hospital bed.

The first time around, things had looked bad for a while and Sam had sat down and had a hard talk with his sister June about his living will, and his intentions if things got that far. He hadn't wanted Liz to know, but June had called her up and told her anyway, believing that Liz had the right to know, to have some warning if his illness got to that point. She'd talked with her father, they'd argued about keeping her in the dark, about how treatments kept getting better, that there was always hope. She'd thought she had talked him around, but she understood now that her father had just been telling her what she wanted to hear, trying to keep her from worrying.

It still gnawed at her, a burr-like frustration. If only she'd paid better attention to her father months and months sooner and made him go keep his check back appointments, caught it sooner, if only her head had not been so turned by Tom and the decision about whether or not to go ahead with the adoption — and work and Red, she admitted to herself, her absurd, absolute hunger for work and Red — she would have been a better daughter to him and kept him healthy. If only he had treated her like a grownup and let her know something, anything, in time to say goodbye.

It was easier to be angry with Red instead of Sam. He was responsible for a myriad of sins, and not without fault for keeping her in the dark. And he was there, to shout at and blame, unlike her father, whose memory even now she couldn't face with anger, only hurt and loss. Red had seemed willing and resigned, even eager, to shoulder all her rage and all her blame, he hadn't even told her that Sam had asked for his help, called in the debts Red owed him for this deadly mercy. No, he had tried to lead her to think him a murderer until she started asking for details of how that last day, that last conversation had gone, and it had slowly come out in another of their brutal heart-to-hearts in the back of one of his luxury cars.

She'd demanded to be dropped off and sent Red away after that, unable to bear the presence of his obvious grief beside her while she tried to absorb it all.

She'd called Sam's sister June that night, back at her motel. After brushing aside even more heartfelt and unwanted sympathies at the tragic loss of her husband, she had found that even her Aunt had known that Sam was very sick and failing fast.

"I had to pry it out of him. He tried to swear me to secrecy, but I didn't think it was right. I left messages for you, sweetie. And I talked to your…" June said, and Liz remembered that yes, there had been vague voice messages and reminders from Tom that Aunt June had called again but she hadn't put it together, not in time.

She wondered if Tom had intentionally kept information back, not let her know the urgency of the situation, but she couldn't see why he would. What purpose it would serve in his mission for Berlin? Maybe he just hadn't cared enough, or maybe June truly hadn't done more than ask for Liz to call her. She didn't feel like interrogating June about it, couldn't do it without explaining why the thought Tom could have lied.

"Well, anyway, I don't want you to blame yourself," her aunt was saying, "He didn't want your life to get all torn up, and you know how proud he was. You know how much he always wanted to be your big hero. He didn't want you remembering him all frail and confused. Cancer does that sometimes, I didn't know that until I did some research. But that's how he figured out he was getting sick again, he kept getting disoriented… Anyway, it was selfish of him to keep you in the dark, it's alright for you to be angry you know? None of us expected him to go so quick. I thought. It doesn't matter what I thought. But you were always such a serious little kid, always taking too much on. I just want to remind you that you can't blame yourself for not knowing what Sam just didn't want you to know."

"Yes. I know. I'll try to remember that," she said. Her voice sounded so small, like it came from someone else.

"How're you holding up, anyhow? Mike and I are just rattling around the place now that Amy's moved out at last, there's plenty of room. You're more than welcome to come and visit any time. Get your feet under you again?"

"I— That's really nice of you, but I couldn't. I'm doing okay, and I can't get away from work. There's a very important case with no end in sight. I can't tell you anything about it, but it's eating up all my time."

She was unable to picture spending even an afternoon with her nice, suburban aunt and uncle after everything that had happened in her life. They'd always been such normal people. Aware and forgiving of Sam's less than legal talents, yes, but not at all a part of the world of danger and death she lived in now — and she'd always been the strange, alien foundling in their midst.

"Are you sure you're okay, Sweetie? The caller ID said you're at a hotel or something, haven't you found a new place yet?" said June.

"Yes, yes I'm fine, and I do have a place… I'm just traveling right now, for work," she stammered, and stared at the, closed, faded curtains of her motel room. It was a necessary lie.

She was quick to make her goodbyes after that. There was no way to explain the way she was living, not to anyone. She had thought that if anyone could be sympathetic about it, it would be Red and yet he seemed almost personally affronted that she'd chosen not to put down roots again. If he couldn't understand then her colleagues surely wouldn't, or the small number of remaining family who might as well have been strangers to her now, in spite of her aunt's kindness.

It was clear then that she was the only one who hadn't known, by accident, by design and by her own distracted blindness in always assuming things would be fine. That phone calls and decisions could be put off indefinitely. That the major events of her life would stay put and wait for her to be ready to face them.

* * *

Her grief for Sam was a much a friend to her as anyone was, these days. She tended it carefully when she could, and kept it tucked away when she couldn't. It was, in a strange way, good company — better company anyway than her loss and betrayal over Tom. So she was in no hurry to cast it off and be done with it.

Her anger with Red had withered with time and distance, and finding that even her aunt had known about Sam's illness seemed to rob it of any remaining power. After all, Red had actually been there for Sam, in the end, which was better than she or June had managed. She could afford to let that particular strain of anger at him go, especially when there were already so many other things causing friction between them.

She still didn't understand why he'd essentially volunteered to take responsibility for Sam's death when they both would have been happier in the long run if he'd just explained everything all at once rather than letting her believe the distorted version of the facts Tom had fed her. It would have been hard to hear but it would have saved her near-resignation and his near miss with being arrested and kept permanently with no hope of immunity or clemency. It would have saved her the weeks of longing for his presence and comfort in the wake of Tom's death while at the same time feeling breathless with guilt at the way she still most wanted comfort from the man she'd believed had murdered her father.

It would have been kinder to her to tell her the whole truth rather than trying to shoulder the blame in Sam's place and trying to honor his promise of secrecy. Red had promised never to lie to her and then he had, and that fact still ate at her, however well-meaning that lie had been. Even his loyalty to her father didn't excuse it. She'd had enough of liars in her life.

She'd never known anyone so willing to be martyr as Red, so willing to be loathed if he thought the benefit to her outweighed the antipathy he would endure. For all her experience in her field, she still didn't know what to make of that overworked, self-destructive aspect of his character. She couldn't tell if it was meant to provoke pity or to avoid it. She wasn't sure if it was a behavior fed by ego or fed by the profound lack of ego, a lack of self worth that should have been impossible in a man like him, who had to rely only on his own abilities so much of the time. She didn't understand it, and she hated the way she so easily went along with it time and again.

* * *

After their strained conversation, the evening after Creel and the sniper, Red really did leave her in peace for a while. It was a relief. It was restful.

Occasionally she woke up in the morning to a knock at her door and the only thing thing there by the time she got up and put on her robe would be a little bag of pastries for her breakfast and note requesting her presence at a meeting place some time later. He had learned by then she wasn't taking his calls.

When she went to these rendezvous, always in public, neutral places — often the park, by the water, with the sun on their faces and the slowly growing autumnal crispness in the air, with the wind-breakered old men playing chess in the background like they were enacting a tame parody of covert meetings in pulp thrillers — he would give her a case, a name, ask if the team had gotten anywhere looking for Berlin. Simple exchanges of facts the way she'd so often demanded in the beginning.

He would be perfectly amiable, and perfectly distant and he often wouldn't even stay longer than five or ten minutes. She couldn't read him those days. His posture was stiff, and he was camouflaged under the brim of his had and the amber shade of his sunglasses. It was as if he was suddenly a stranger to her, and she to him.

She wanted it to be a pleasant change, she wanted it to feel like a lessening of pressure, one less thing to worry her. The swiftness of the reversal was somewhat dizzying, she told herself, that was the only reason she felt so off balance after these meetings. And why she kept expecting other efforts at contact that never came.

There was plenty to occupy her time, in any case. Monsters to hunt, profiles to write up for her personal records. Just cultivating the self control to not intentionally lose her protective detail, Ezra and whoever else, took up a greater amount of time and energy than she was comfortable admitting to herself. Defiance really was more important to her than self-preservation, and that was a hard pill to swallow. She'd always thought of herself as largely pragmatic, considering the way her work was all about puzzles and reasoning, but it was clear to her now that the second someone urged her to do something for her own good, she became desperate to do the opposite. Fighting her own conflicting impulses was a full time job.

Some nights she missed him though, missed the times when she had felt free to go to Red at one of his safe houses, share a drink, share a late meal and deeply personal worries under the auspices of their tacitly agreed cease-fire. She'd gravitated to him as a confidant. Those nights, she had felt that there were so much more the same than different, that their minds worked along similar patterns in the most miraculous way. She had never found it so easy to communicate with anyone and be understood as in those strange, private conversations. She'd been elated to find such a kindred spirit in such an unlikely person, even as she was unsettled by what it said about her that she found so much in common with such a deadly man.

Too much had happened with him since then though, too much baggage, too much bitterness, too much tension. She doubted she could ever reach out to him again with such ease. She doubted he would welcome her the same way if she ever tried.

* * *

She'd been hopeful for a while, at the end of the summer when Red had come back from his business trip tanned and tired but back to his own usual bluff, amiable self things had thawed between them. She'd thought they'd both been able to put the business with Tom behind them and move on. She'd come out of shock by then, she'd found some way to process his full confession about Sam, and the dreams hadn't begun yet.

The first time they'd met after his return from parts unknown was not without tension, she didn't delude herself. But it had been a different kind of tension. She'd gone to his safe house of the moment, the writer's house in Baltimore for the first time since the case with the man with congenital analgesia and the poor young man buried alive. It hadn't been the first case they'd worked closely on alone together, but it was the first time she'd seen a glimpse of the sturdy moral underpinnings of his character. As much as he had pretended that he'd only been interested in what use the boy could be to him, she'd seen the way the tenor of his interest changed when he realized there was an innocent life at stake. It had taken Liz months to admit to herself just what she'd seen in him and acknowledge that it was real, but it had still been a bit of a turning point in her perception of him. Spending time at the Hempstead house again, after all that had passed in the interim, was curiously poignant.

He brought her a drink — not the cloudy, dubious potion of the writer's but good scotch, smooth and peaty, that even so was a bit much for her so was a bit much for her so she sipped slowly — and they sat in the library. It was warm and the windows with the pastoral view he so loved opened wide to let in the fresh air and dissipate the stuffiness of the sleepy, little-used house.

This time she knew that the reason she'd come was to see him. Because she'd missed him. Because she needed to know if she'd ever be able to look on his face again without choking on guilt, and it seemed at last, she was able. She could look and look and only see her ally, her confidant, not the broken look he'd worn after Tom, not the morbid guilt he'd shown her over her father's death. She'd held the sharp, earthy taste of his scotch and her hope together on her tongue and breathed in the sweet, late summer air.

"I need to know if you trust me, Lizzie, if you are able to try to trust me again," he said, quiet but full of an edge of worry that worried her in turn.

"I'm trying, Red," she said, "I think I do. You're the one I always end up turning to, after all."

"I want you to know that I don't think that there is… immediate danger. But I need to know… if you have enough faith in me, in my intentions toward you, that if I came to you one day or one night and said that we had to leave, right then, immediately, would you do it? Would you trust that I was asking this very difficult thing, leaving all you know to come with me, was to keep you safe and well?" He hadn't touched his own drink, just set his glass lightly against his thigh in a stiff affectation of a casual pose but she could see his fingers fidgeting against the cut crystal, his eyes were clear and sharp and there was a tense set to his mouth she seldom saw.

She watched for the twitch beneath his eye that signaled nerves or evasion, but his cheeks were still, and smooth — freshly shaved, he must have finished settling in just before she arrived. He looked tired but healthy and strong, formidable even. The day was beautiful and serene and much of the tension between them seemed to have faded, if not for good at least into the background. The idea of sudden flight before something they couldn't fight or trick or defuse seemed impossible. She didn't at that moment, with the beautiful golden light of sunset casting the whole room and them with soft yellows and deep browns and blacks like something out of a painting, and Red poised on the edge of the sofa, watching her and looking particularly resplendent, that there could be any power out there who would be threat enough to make want to snatch her up and flee like a common criminal. It seemed so implausible, like picturing them acting out a scene from a cheap noir, overblown and absurd.

"I think I would," she said slowly but without real gravity, "If I had some warning."

"And if there was no warning? Would you still?" he pressed, leaning forward, keeping her gaze.

She began to feel unsettled. She set her glass aside with a quick movement to give herself time to think. He was serious, and she still couldn't picture quite what she would do.

"I… Yes. Okay, Red. Yes, I would," she promised, certain that such a thing would never come to pass but also that she would go with him if he came to her wearing that exact face, that expression like he knew what it was to look at the end of the world and come back from it. "Berlin's not that much of a threat, right? What's going on? Is this anything to do with where you've been the last few weeks?"

He smiled at last, not with happiness she supposed but with relief, and familiarity with her barrage of questions. "No, Lizzie, no, and I'm sorry to put such a sour note on our evening… I'm more sure than ever that Berlin is a free agent, not connected to certain other powers. But he's exerting a pull, he's throwing the system out of balance. That worries me more than whatever his direct plans are. But we're fine for now. We could be fine for a long time yet."

"But I recently freaked out at you in a not inconsiderable way and you needed to check if I could still deal with you in a crisis," she said wryly, cutting to the heart of it.

"Something like that," he allowed, and then settled in more comfortably at last, tasting his drink and letting the tension bleed out of his spine. His eyes stayed on her, watching her like he was truly glad of the sight of her.

It had been a nice evening all in all, after the unsettling beginning. She thought it was a sign of a new era of partnership. They had a nice dinner delivered and she basked happily in his attention all evening. He'd even sent her home with one of Hempstead's finished manuscripts, saying it was his favorite and she really should try it.

A week later he received a parcel with a lock of hair tied with a ribbon from Berlin, claiming it was his wife's. He didn't tell her about it for three days.


End file.
